diary

diary

diary [Lat.,=day], a daily record of events and observations. As distinguished from memoir (an account of events placed in perspective by the author long after they have occurred), the diary derives its impact from its immediacy, requiring each generation of readers to supply its own perspective. The earliest diaries extant are the Roman commentarii—household account books, senators' speech notebooks, and Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars. Diaries are of particular interest to historians because they depict everyday life in a particular place and time, often illuminating important historical events. Examples of such diaries are the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, written by an anonymous French clerk from 1401 to 1431; accounts of daily life in the American colonies by William Bradford, John Winthrop, William Byrd, and Samuel Sewall; Anne Frank's diary (1947, tr. 1953), an account of the early days of World War II by a young German-Jewish girl who died in a concentration camp; and Harold Nicolson's diaries (1964-68), which treat the world situation from 1929 to 1962. A particularly unusual diary is that of the painter Eugène Delacroix (covering 1822-24 and 1847-63), which contains many extraordinary drawings. Among the many diaries of literary and psychological interest, the greatest is probably that of Samuel Pepys. While presenting a detailed portrait of life in 17th-century England, the diary also renders many charming and humorous incidents, the product of Pepys's observant eye and delightful style. It records, for example, the New Year festivities of 1666: "Then to dancing and supper and mighty merry till Mr. Belt came in, whose pain of the tooth-ake made him no company, and spoilt ours." Other important literary diarists are John Evelyn, Jonathan Swift, Dorothy Wordsworth, Jules and Edmund Goncourt, Charles Baudelaire, André Gide, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, and Anaïs Nin, whose 126-volume diary represents her efforts to "unmask the deeper self," so that it might be studied by psychiatrists.

Record of events, transactions, or observations kept daily or at frequent intervals; especially a daily record of personal activities, reflections, or feelings. Written primarily for the writer's use alone, the personal diary usually offers a frankness not found in writing done for publication. The diary form, which began to flower in the late Renaissance, is important as a record of social and political history. The most famous diary in English is that of Samuel Pepys. Other notable journals include those of John Evelyn, Jonathan Swift, Fanny Burney, James Boswell, André Gide, and Virginia Woolf.

Diary-X (commonly abbreviated dx) was the name of an online journaling service which allowed internet users to create and maintain a journal or diary. While similar in form to other services such as LiveJournal, Diary-X attempted to encourage longer, more introspective entries in lieu of the shorter, link-heavy entries that are more prevalent on other services. Because of this, Diary-X never referred to itself as a blogging service — it was instead a journaling service that happened to be online.

History

Diary-X held a limited beta test in June 2000, but did not officially launch until August 7, 2000. Immediately after the official launch, Diary-X underwent significant growth. Signups compounded at an average of 1.25% per day for a year, ending in August 2001 with nearly 10,000 users. The growth continued at that rate until signups were closed in late 2002 due to support demands from Diary-X users outstripping what the sole administrator could provide.

When signups came back online in March 2003, they contained a roadblock which required users to wait a minimum of 12 hours before their accounts were activated. This functionality was created specifically to weed out people who were not interested in actually maintaining a journal (e.g., those users who were really looking for a blog host).

As of 2005, the site hosted approximately 120,000 journals, of which roughly 8,000 were being actively maintained.

In February 2006, the main drive on which the diaries were saved failed, and the sole proprietor of the site sent the drive for data recovery. On February 24, 2006, it was announced that the drive was irrevocably damaged and all data was indeed lost. The owner stated that rather than try to resurrect the site, it would be formally closed down as of March 31, 2006.

As of March 2006, a community project, called Codexed, is underway to construct a site which combines the features popularized by Diary-X (using its original codebase as a launching point), with more modern features popular on other services. This community project is made up of a core team of one administrator, five department leads, and one project co-ordinator, as well as a large number of community contributors. The administrator of Diary-X plans to contribute to the new project, but will not be involved in the administration.

Codexed went almost completely dormant from about March 2007 until May 2008, with the forums mostly untouched, no visible progress made on the website, and no activity on the advertised IRC channel.

As of May 21, 2008, the Codexed site is undergoing a semi-public alpha test as part of a ramp-up to a release.

Features

Diary-X featured a fully-interactive templating system which allowed users to specify the look and feel of their journal using raw HTML and CSS, or choose from one of the pre-built templates, from which they could specify a selected number of features, such as the colors. The site intentionally limited the number of journal entries that could be displayed per page to exactly one, unlike blogging, which allows multiple entries on one page. One page entries required the user to 'fill the page', hopefully with something insightful.

Community

The community aspect was less pronounced than among other sites like Xanga and LiveJournal, but the site offered a set of forums for social interaction and technical support. The community, on the whole, discouraged SMS language and leet speak, in the belief that these are destroying the English language.